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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25390744">Misfortunes and Fallacies</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiixil_84/pseuds/chiixil_84'>chiixil_84</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>D&amp;D [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Curse of Strahd - Fandom, Dungeons &amp; Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Dungeons &amp; Dragons - All Media Types</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Curse of Strahd, Gothic, Horror, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Psychological Horror, Survival Horror, Tags May Change, gothic horror</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>In-Progress</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-19</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 12:21:45</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Not Rated</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,527</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25390744</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/chiixil_84/pseuds/chiixil_84</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>She was a young sorceress, and the land of Barovia was her first real "adventure." Many of the others in her party had a few other journeys under their belt, but they were great company to keep.</p><p>Everything in the world screamed for the party to refuse the call of Barovia; they didn't listen.</p><p>They should've listened.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>D&amp;D [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1838893</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Misfortunes and Fallacies</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Though she had only been in Barovia for a little over a month, it felt like it had been a lifetime since she had been anywhere beyond the mist-strangled country; at one time, the sorceress had been compassionate and trusting (<em>oh, so trusting</em>), holding a child’s fantasy in her heart of what injustice meant and how to combat it. She had wanted to eradicate this strange land of its problems – she tried <em>so hard </em>to help these poor people, but doing one thing today meant the world would burn itself in retaliation of her attempts tomorrow – and had planned to speak with Lord Strahd during his dinner party to try and get him to see his people’s torment enough to change the country for the better. </p><p><em> Hell, </em>she would was more than willing to give up every shred of her dignity and turn to <em>beg </em>the lord to consider changing his ways, if it came down to it; the tiefling would have done anything to lessen the prolonged suffering of these people, and thought she was ready to face that possibility. </p><p>However, that was at a time when she didn’t think that it was the lord that had been the cause for any of Barovia’s pain. </p><p>Once upon a time, she’d heard tales of the Devil Strahd: his hold on his country came as a cautionary tale from her father as a reminder that not all powers gained were<em> good </em>ones, and, as a child, the tiefling believed people could (and would) change if they were given the chance to – if they were shown <em>how </em>to. </p><p>She may have been young, but Ashes thought she had seen what <em>injustice </em>was once she set out to adventure throughout this strange world; however, her naïveté came crashing down around her on the day her party accepted the lord of Barovia’s dinner invitation, and for the first time in her life, she found herself questioning her everything she ever put faith in. </p><p>And, <em>oh</em>, how beautifully everything she’d ever touched burned as her worldview came crashing down; she might have wondered what it looked like from the outside, if the pain of this realization  did not <em>burn</em> as hot as it did in the pit of her stomach. </p><p>Those she surrounded herself with had been the only solid foundation she knew she could fall back on as she tried building herself back up from the ashes of her failed beliefs, even despite the frequent mistakes she made due to her foolishness and misconceptions; the tiefling wouldn’t have made it this far otherwise, and would have been swept away in this world of grey long ago if she hadn’t found them. Many of her party’s members held the same beliefs she did – help those today, stand by them as the world came crashing down tomorrow, remain by their side after that even in the face of the Devil himself – but even those that didn’t hold similar views could readily see that this country would fail without someone at the helm to protect the people here. </p><p>It didn’t matter what they asked of Strahd; the people of Barovia were tied to a legacy of pain, and that would never change. </p><p>However, they knew they could only help those that wanted it: they wanted to help the priest’s son in Barovia, but were turned away viciously, the father too scared that doing anything beyond his incessant prayer would incur further wrath upon his bloodline; Ireena begged the travelers to convince her brother to flee from the town with her and find solace in Vallaki, but Ismark – through stubbornness, pride, faith, or all three – would not speak with them, taking upon their late-father’s title to guide their town through its grief instead; they witnessed a nighthag dragging off a child from his parents, both begging the hag to accept their debt in gold rather than their firstborn son, but despite the party’s intervention that day, they found out the child was taken to the coven’s windmill anyway; in a random bout of luck, the party witnessed a fisherman throw a writhing bag into the lake as his last-ditch effort to appease any gods to bring back the fish, and upon retrieving the bag the adventurers found a beaten and drugged child as his sacrifice, scared and waterlogged but otherwise alive. </p><p>And those instances all happened during their first week in this horrible country; so many other horrible, nightmare-wrenching events were thrown at the party, and at this point, they were becoming <em>exhausted</em>. The Devil Strahd had centuries to build up his defenses; they had a few <em>days </em>to figure out how to combat him. </p><p>Despite all of this, <em>despite her worldview crashing down</em>, Ashes believed that the world could – <em>would </em>– change when provided another way out; Hell, she and the bard concocted a plan to overthrow Vallaki’s corrupted burgomaster and replace him with an elected council instead, only dropping the plan in its infancy when the newly-acquainted Lady Wachter revealed her own plans for the town instead. </p><p>But, that had taken place <em>after </em>the dinner. </p><p>The only instance that happened before then was saving the child from the night hag; Ashes still bubbled with <em>hope </em>and thoughts of <em>justice </em>and a willingness to destroy her worth to save the people of this land. </p><p>Since receiving the invitation, Ashes took it upon herself to stay up every night in an attempt to digest everything the Martikovs gave her – letters, books, their own accounts of their knowledge on the lord of Barovia – while planning her questions and carefully-curated replies to get the lord to see how far his world had fallen. Surely, a king that lived this long would make <em>accidents</em> – even if was a centuries-long mistake, perhaps his actions could be rectified if he truly wished to change? </p><p>All manners and guest rights were thrown out the window that night as he made a fool of them, trapping the party in his castle with horrors down every corridor. He reacted to their plights as if it were a <em>game </em>to him<em>. </em></p><p>That night, they saw nightmarish visions around every corner, could hear screams from those long-since dead echoing through the walls, and questioned whether or not this was all some show that he <em>wanted </em>them to see. </p><p>Somehow – by some stroke of good luck or by the boon of a god – they were able to find not only the symbol of ravenkind, but also the sunsword. The game Strahd had been playing with them turned deadly when he realized they found <em>two </em>of his most prized relics, and he no longer wished to watch them struggle. </p><p>It certainly didn’t help that her last attempt at getting the lord to see his fallacies had been little more than an <em>insult </em>to the ancient being; Ashes should’ve known better. But, a part of her wasn’t thinking when she called out, “<em>Ireena </em><em>will never love you as you are, Strahd!” </em></p><p>In a rage, Strahd chased them from the towers down through the halls, always just a hair behind them as the fires of Hell burned in his dark eyes. Terror pumped through the party’s limbs as they ran quite literally for their lives, taking shots from the gargoyles and dragons in the front hall just to have the<em> chance </em>at escaping this Hell. </p><p>As they fled, she and the bard were unable to keep up with their party members. As their friends threw themselves from the castle, the sorceress – stayed by fear or by spell, she couldn’t tell the difference – found herself unable to move as the Devil finally caught up to them. He plucked the bard up like a ragdoll and ripped into his throat, and dropped the tiefling just as quickly. Sinn held on to his rapidly bleeding (and, later, terribly scarred) neck, struggling to breathe as he and Ashes crawled through the mud and away from Ravenloft. </p><p>If she reminisced back onto that night for too long, the sorceress could still feel the gush of blood from Strahd’s feral attack on their bard, and how awfully <em>cold </em>it’d been despite it being a warm night. </p><p>It didn’t help that as they clawed through the rain up and down the mountainside, bodies were littered across the muddied roads – some of them still breathing, others newly risen undead – that the party slipped and found themselves upon. Strahd had – somehow – used a polymorph charm to make these displayed corpses look like different party members, dead or dying while begging for them to kill them. </p><p>Or perhaps they had finally gone insane, and they were hallucinating the entirety of their trip back to the safety of the city. </p><p>They arrived at the city of Vallaki just as the sun broke the hazy horizon’s edge, the city still sleeping peacefully. The party couldn’t sleep that night, so they stayed up and spent their time in the bar. The Martikov’s stayed with them silently, almost in a pitying way. They’d tried warning the party of Strahd’s horrors; the newcomers to this land did not listen. </p><p>And now, they were witnessing the true curse that Strahd had brought upon the land: <em>himself</em>. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>Now that our campaign has been over for six months, I'm finally posting my little blurbs about our adventures!! I really, ABSOLUTELY, loved Curse of Strahd; it was my first D&amp;D campaign, and it holds a very special place in my heart.</p><p>Gothic horror? Yes please.</p><p>This is going to be more about the horror aspects of the campaign, but I'll add another set of stories just about our pure chaotic shit.</p><p>Hope y'all enjoy!</p></blockquote></div></div>
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